4 ms·

People need to go back and use Win 3.1 or MacOS 7.x to realize what a leap forward Win95 was. MacOS 7.x didn't even have preemptive multitasking! The start me

by beloch 8mo ago

People need to go back and use Win 3.1 or MacOS 7.x to realize what a leap forward Win95 was. MacOS 7.x didn't even have preemptive multitasking! The start menu and task bar made their debut and immediately anchored the whole UI. Since then, Windows has made incremental advances (with the occasional step backwards), but no change has been nearly so radical. OS X would not have been possible without the influence of win95. We're still living in the Win95 age.

cosmic_cheese 8mo ago
OS X inherited its multitasking model from NeXTSTEP, which predates Win95 by several years.
LtWorf 8mo ago
You have to use windows 95 with a computer from 1995 to realise how painfully slow it was compared to windows 3.
- hollandheese 8mo ago
  Windows 3.11 loads in less than a blink of an eye on my Pentium MMX, while Windows 98 takes at least a minute to boot. This is with a 8 GB CF card as the HDD too, so the I/O is going as fast as possible.
  - M95D 8mo ago
    It's because of drivers and PnP and especially USB. When you load Win3.1, WinNT4 and lower, drivers load without scanning for hardware presence. It's just a disk to memory copy. In Win95, the first PnP OS, it scans for PnP hardware at every boot. That's slow. To prove my point, you could try loading some of the USB drivers for DOS or one of the ISA PnP configuration utilities (such as ICU - Intel Configuration Utility), see how fast it boots then! Also, if you left the network config untouched, it defaults to TCPIP+DHCP, and when DHCP doesn't respond (cable unplugged), it's another 30s delay. Win311 didn't have TCPIP unless you install it manually. It also asks you to configure it during installation - less likely to select DHCP if you don't have it. And then, in Win311, network is started by DOS (NET START in autoexec.bat), not by Windows.
    - LtWorf 8mo ago
      Besides the boot (which windows 3 didn't even do so I don't see why we are comparing it), from clicking on the start menu the 1st time after boot, to the start menu actually appearing on screen it would take 1-2 minutes to populate on windows 95, while on windows 3 on the same machine there would be no such issue.
      - deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
      - M95D 8mo ago
        This is not true. Win95 start menu appears instantly. I dare you to prove me wrong. You are probably thinking of Win98 menu where they added IE.
        LtWorf 8mo ago
        I am thinking of windows 95 with a computer from 1995, in the year 1995. If you use it on a vm today… yeah thanks for not proving anything.
        M95D 8mo ago
        I'm not using a vm. I have an early 2000s computer running several old OSs. In Win98 I replaced the shell with the one from Win95 because it's faster. See 98lite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_remastering#98lite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_remastering#98lite
        LtWorf 8mo ago
        I am not a great mathematical genius but I suspect that "early 2000s" came several years after 1995. Correct?
        M95D 8mo ago
        I'm sorry I don't have a museum at home to provide relevant demonstrations to random internet persons or bots. Win95 start menu opens instantly on any computer that can run it. You either belive me or not.
zzo38computer 8mo ago
I have used both Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Windows 95 does have some significant benefits (e.g. you can start Windows programs from the DOS prompt (I seem to remember that you cannot do this in Windows 3.1 and in Windows 95 you can, but I am not sure if I remember correctly), and the WIN+R shortcut, and some others), but also many problems (although some can be avoided by changing stuff in the registry; I had done that to force it to display the file name extensions for all file names, rather than hiding them even if you tell it to display them; I also dislike their decision to use spaces in file names).
- quietbritishjim 8mo ago
  You could change the option to hide file extensions in the explorer settings windows; no registry tweak was needed. Not wanting spaces in file names is certainly a bold opinion! I think you'll find yourself in a very small minority there.
  - h2zizzle 8mo ago
    I don't have strong feelings either way, but I can see the perspective that underscores should suffice, and that introducing white space into filenames makes certain file and data management tasks more difficult and unpredictable.
  - zzo38computer 8mo ago
    > You could change the option to hide file extensions in the explorer settings windows; no registry tweak was needed. The is a setting in Explorer, but it does not affect all file types; some (such as .lnk) are not affected by that setting and hide the extension anyways.

by beloch 8mo ago

cosmic_cheese 8mo ago

OS X inherited its multitasking model from NeXTSTEP, which predates Win95 by several years.

LtWorf 8mo ago

You have to use windows 95 with a computer from 1995 to realise how painfully slow it was compared to windows 3.

hollandheese 8mo ago
Windows 3.11 loads in less than a blink of an eye on my Pentium MMX, while Windows 98 takes at least a minute to boot. This is with a 8 GB CF card as the HDD too, so the I/O is going as fast as possible.
- M95D 8mo ago
  It's because of drivers and PnP and especially USB. When you load Win3.1, WinNT4 and lower, drivers load without scanning for hardware presence. It's just a disk to memory copy. In Win95, the first PnP OS, it scans for PnP hardware at every boot. That's slow. To prove my point, you could try loading some of the USB drivers for DOS or one of the ISA PnP configuration utilities (such as ICU - Intel Configuration Utility), see how fast it boots then! Also, if you left the network config untouched, it defaults to TCPIP+DHCP, and when DHCP doesn't respond (cable unplugged), it's another 30s delay. Win311 didn't have TCPIP unless you install it manually. It also asks you to configure it during installation - less likely to select DHCP if you don't have it. And then, in Win311, network is started by DOS (NET START in autoexec.bat), not by Windows.
  - LtWorf 8mo ago
    Besides the boot (which windows 3 didn't even do so I don't see why we are comparing it), from clicking on the start menu the 1st time after boot, to the start menu actually appearing on screen it would take 1-2 minutes to populate on windows 95, while on windows 3 on the same machine there would be no such issue.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    - M95D 8mo ago
      This is not true. Win95 start menu appears instantly. I dare you to prove me wrong. You are probably thinking of Win98 menu where they added IE.
      - LtWorf 8mo ago
        I am thinking of windows 95 with a computer from 1995, in the year 1995. If you use it on a vm today… yeah thanks for not proving anything.
        M95D 8mo ago
        I'm not using a vm. I have an early 2000s computer running several old OSs. In Win98 I replaced the shell with the one from Win95 because it's faster. See 98lite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_remastering#98lite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_remastering#98lite
        LtWorf 8mo ago
        I am not a great mathematical genius but I suspect that "early 2000s" came several years after 1995. Correct?
        M95D 8mo ago
        I'm sorry I don't have a museum at home to provide relevant demonstrations to random internet persons or bots. Win95 start menu opens instantly on any computer that can run it. You either belive me or not.

zzo38computer 8mo ago

I have used both Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Windows 95 does have some significant benefits (e.g. you can start Windows programs from the DOS prompt (I seem to remember that you cannot do this in Windows 3.1 and in Windows 95 you can, but I am not sure if I remember correctly), and the WIN+R shortcut, and some others), but also many problems (although some can be avoided by changing stuff in the registry; I had done that to force it to display the file name extensions for all file names, rather than hiding them even if you tell it to display them; I also dislike their decision to use spaces in file names).

quietbritishjim 8mo ago
You could change the option to hide file extensions in the explorer settings windows; no registry tweak was needed. Not wanting spaces in file names is certainly a bold opinion! I think you'll find yourself in a very small minority there.
- h2zizzle 8mo ago
  I don't have strong feelings either way, but I can see the perspective that underscores should suffice, and that introducing white space into filenames makes certain file and data management tasks more difficult and unpredictable.
- zzo38computer 8mo ago
  > You could change the option to hide file extensions in the explorer settings windows; no registry tweak was needed. The is a setting in Explorer, but it does not affect all file types; some (such as .lnk) are not affected by that setting and hide the extension anyways.